On a sudden impulse, the same fine impulse which would some day carry him ahead of his comrades, straight across the German trenches, he ran to the corner where he had parted with Roy and looked eagerly up one street and down another. He ran to the next corner and looked anxiously down the street which crossed there. He ran a block up this street and looked as far as he could see along Terrace Place which was the way up to the fine old Blakeley homestead on the hill. But no sign of Roy was there to be seen, for the good and sufficient reason that when Roy Blakeley, "Silver Fox," took it into his head to go scout pace, he was presently invisible to pursuers. So Roscoe's impulse passed, as Roscoe's impulses were very apt to do, and he wandered homeward, telling himself that fate had been against him and balked his noble resolution. As he went down through Rockwood Place he saw the lights in the library, which told him that his mother and father were still up. But he did not deliver Mr. Ellsworth's message; he was strong enough for that, anyway. Instead, he went straight up to his own room, which he had not occupied lately, and when he got up there he found that he was not alone. For a certain face haunted him all night and would not go away--a face with a heavy shock of hair, with a big, rugged mouth, and a bloody cut on its forehead. CHAPTER XXV THE FACE All the next day that face haunted Roscoe. "If I could only know where he is," he said to himself; "if I could bring him back, I'd tell the whole business." It occurred to him that perhaps Tom was dead and that that was why he was continually seeing that stolid face with the bloody scar. "Maybe the cut got worse and he got blood poisoning and died," he thought. This train of thought possessed him so that he grew to believe that Tom Slade must really be dead. And that being the case, there would be no use in telling anybody anything.... At breakfast he seemed so preoccupied that after he left the room his mother said to his father, "You don't think he's nervous or timid, do you?" "I think he's a little nervous about making a speech in public," said Mr. Bent. "He isn't afraid of anything else," he added proudly. During the morning Mrs. Bent wanted to take his picture. "You look so splendid and handsome in your uniform, dear!" she told him. So he stood in the big bay window where the sunlight streamed in and let her snap the camera at him. He did look splendid and handsome, there was no denying that. Then she would have him develop the film with his own hands so that she could make some prints right away. "You may not have another leave," she said. "It's dreadful that you have to go back to camp late to-night." "Don't you care," he laughed, in that companionable way in which he always talked with his mother. "You can take one of the prints over to East Bridgeboro to-night," she added, as an inducement to his developing the film at once. "Think she'd like to have one?"